This project proposes to study the nature of right hemisphere cortical hearing and its possible contribution to the perception and production of "paralinguistic" aspects of language such as prosody and emotional tone. The first part examines some of the critical parameters in the right hemisphere's analysis of harmonic information including the role of fundamental frequency in the pattern recognition process, and the relative importance of this right hemisphere process in complex pitch and timber discrimination. The second part of this project proposes to examine the role of right hemisphere auditory function in the "paralinguistic" aspects of language that are conveyed and perceived by acoustic cues for which a right hemisphere advantage has been shown. Thus, this research is intended to provide further understanding of specific right hemisphere auditory processes as well as to explore the areas where such processes contribute to moreglobal behavior such as communication.